5 Poems by William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams 1883- 1963

"Keats was my God," (1) Williams said. He also said he looked to Whitman as "a sort of purgation and confessional, to clear my head and heart from turgid obsessions." But his friendship with Ezra Pound, whom Williams met in 1924, was pivotal in his development as a poet.

Born September 17, 1883, William Carlos Williams grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey. His English father and Puerto Rican mother provided a rich literary and artistic background for his early years; his father read aloud to his two sons from Shakespeare and Dante and his mother was a painter.

Williams became a medical doctor, but wrote at night. On weekends, he associated in New York with avant-garde artists like Man Ray, and Marcel Duschamp. There he became involved with a group known as "The Others" which included Wallace Stevens, Mina Loy, and Marianne Moore. He was an early practitioner of the imagist movement, but became more interested in developing an American verse form that was inspired by his study of his patients' stories and their speech patterns. Some of his poems were composed on blank prescription sheets on which he might jot a phrase derived from a patient's subject matter. (2)

His friendship with Ezra pound had introduced him to modern sensibilities and personalities like Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) H.D. Introduced Williams to sapphic form. (3) But, Williams became disapproving of Pound's (and T.S. Elliot's) allusions to Classical sources and foreign languages. Speaking of T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland," Williams said: "we were breaking the rules, whereas he was conforming to the excellencies of classroom English.(4)

Williams advocated "no ideas but in things," as is found in his poem "A Sort of a Song." He described his meter as the "variable foot" which he derived from the colloquial idioms of his patients, and his observations of how radio and newspaper influenced language. He described the poem as "a machine made out of words." (5)

Though his audience was small when he was publishing, Williams mentored many younger poets and is heralded as a significant influence by later Beat, Black Mountain, New York School, and San Francisco Renaissance poets.

Williams continued to write despite a series of health issues that he began to encounter starting with a 1949 heart attack and several subsequent strokes. He died in his sleep March 4, 1963.
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Text of Poems:
This Is Just to Say
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15535

The Act
http://poetry365.tumblr.com/post/84231590/the-act-william-carlos-williams

The Great Figure
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=182065

A Sort of a Song
http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/7314-William-Carlos-Williams-A-Sort-Of-A-Song

Tract
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=174772

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Webliography:
Poetry Foundation: William Carlos Williams (Notes 1,2, and 4)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=81496

Wikipedia William Carlos Williams (notes 3,and 5)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Carlos_Williams

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[luv2knit61]

Bravo! You do such a nice reading.

[PoemsBeingReadALOUD]

@luv2knit61 Thank you. I am glad you liked it. 

[Idlinfarm]

These are some of my most favorite poems. I have been looking for 'Tract' and now I realize Williams wrote it and I was thinking it was Carl Sandburg. I saw Williams once in S.F. at Poetry and Jazz in a little North Beach bar. He had come to hear Ferlinghetti read. He had a caretaker with him but was able to get down the stairs. It felt magical to me then to be in the same room with him. Thanks, James.

[PoemsBeingReadALOUD]

@Idlinfarm Pretty cool that you saw Williams... Thanks, Ida. Glad you liked the reading. ;)

[PoetryETrain]

thank you, this has been added to our playlists here and on facebook...

[oscarnauge002]

wow, one of my favorites poets ever...